In this beautiful and complex work we see two young people, Van Veen and Ada, a brother and a sister who believe themselves to be cousins, fall in love and embark on a sexual relationship. On the 97th birthday of Van Veen, they contemplate the various stages of their long love affair. Published by Nabokov after turning seventy, this is the apogee of his long and brilliant career. As well as being the history of an incestuous relationship, it is also a philosophical treatise on the nature of time, an ode to pleasure and a vindication of Paradise understood as something that is not to be found anywhere other than on earth.